Having only made the California Connoisseur kits to date, which take a month to make and 2 months to mature, I was very dubious about a five day kit! Unlike the more expensive kits, you don't get anything fancy, like oak chips, just 7 litres of grape concentrate, a sachet of combined yeast & nutrient and your standard 2-part finings.
First up, the time scale, as with most kits, is complete fantasy. It took eight days to finish fermenting at 21C, rather than the instruction's claimed four days. After that it took several days to clear, not sure exactly how long as I had to leave it, but even so, when I racked it off, it left sediment all down the side of the bucket, so it hadn't actually cleared that well.
I put 10 litres in a polypin, which was an adventure in itself! I attached a short piece of siphon tube to the tap on my bottling bucket and ran that into the polypin, which worked quite well, until the tube detached and sank to the bottom of the polypin :evil: Thankfully I had sanitised it with Starsan, but I couldn't find a way to retrieve it, so I've left it in there! However, this little incident did dump quite a quantity of wine onto the floor. Once the Polypin was full, I bottled the rest (9 bottles). Even thought the polypin is supposed to be 10 litres, I must have got much more in, as 9 bottles is only 7 litres, and I didn't drop 4 litres on the floor :wha:
Anyway, onto the wine itself, is it any good? Well, I only bottled/bagged it 17 days ago, so I wasn't expecting much. However, a sample out of the polypin showed that it was quite sweet, nice and fruity, but not a whole lot of body. There also seemed to be quite a tannin-like flavour about it. The bottled version, on the other hand, was much smoother, which is odd, as I'd expect the bulk wine to mature more quickly. That said, the bottles have been stored a little cooler, so that may help, or perhaps my siphon tube is tainting the wine!
Worth the money? Well, it has to be a yes. It's only £10 cheaper than a California kit and while the quality isn't maybe as high (at this stage), being able to drink a wine 3 weeks after you started it, is a definite plus point. Next time I will brew it shorter, maybe to 19.5 litres to give it more body.
